Of course I’ve eaten horse. And on many occasions, too. The first time would probably have been when I was around 10 years old. Soho in those days – it was the Fifties – was full of small and rather nice French bistros – and, eight out of 10 times, the steaks served in them would have been horse meat. In any case, even today, if you buy salami, you may well be eating horse or donkey.

I come from a family of horse farmers but I’m not in the least bit sentimental about eating horse. As a meat, it is something we should probably be promoting, what with our obsession with healthy eating: it’s full of protein, iron and omega-3 fatty acids.

Still, I’m not surprised there was an uproar when it was revealed that traces of horse DNA were found in a number of supermarket products – more pertinently, Tesco’s own Everyday Value brand burgers were shown to contain 29 per cent horse meat.

The ensuing outcry, I think, has not been because of misleading labelling, which described this meat product as “beef burgers”. The problem is simply because it is horse meat, which is seen as taboo in this country. People here are sentimental about anything that could be their pet – they baulk at the idea of Black Beauty ending up on their plates. We’re the same about rabbits, but this needn’t be the case. After I did my programme, The Great British Food Revival, last year, in which I extolled the virtues of eating rabbit, I spoke to a great many butchers who said there had been a better uptake following the broadcast.

The French, Italians, Germans, Scandinavians – especially in Sweden and Iceland – the Poles: they all eat horse. In France, it has been popular since the time of the Revolution, when horses belonging to the aristocracy ended up on the plates of the lower classes.

I do think I know why we’re alone in Europe by not eating horse, though. It’s all down to King Alfred. When he was trying to build up his cavalry squadron, he brought in horses from Spain, which were stockier than our own. But the English, much to his annoyance, kept eating them – in those days, horse meat was eaten in large quantities. So he commanded the Archbishop of Canterbury to anathematise the eating of horse. Essentially, if you ate it, you were going to hell.

Not that that stopped everyone: horse meat was cheap and tasty, and remained popular for centuries, partly because horses were so plentiful then as a form of transport (and only useful in that capacity for around five years). Better still, horse meat wasn’t rationed during the war – although by then its popularity was on the wane.

One of the last butchers to sell horse regularly was Arnold Drury in Yorkshire, which closed in the Fifties. The rendered horse fat was sold off to be used in cakes and pastries – and women would queue round the block, it was so popular. One butcher in the north I spoke to recently still sells horse. He says there’s a small market for it, mainly from the descendants of foreigners.

And it’s really only the English who dislike horse. The Scots have more of a tradition of eating horse meat than the English. When I first moved to Scotland 18 years ago, there was still a horse butcher in the Leith district of Edinburgh. Even today, L’Escargot Bleu, a restaurant in the city, has horse on the menu (the choice is pan-fried rump or steak tartare).

I must admit, though, that I don’t particularly like it. Horse tastes sweet and is a deep red in colour, but that’s not the problem. It’s the texture that I’m not so keen on. Horse is spongier than beef. I much prefer mutton or venison.

More alarming than the presence of horse in these burgers, however, is the presence of pork. Not only because of the religious element; the idea that unsuspecting Jews and Muslims might be eating pig is shocking enough. Of equal concern is the quality of the pork in question. I’d imagine much of it comes from central Europe, where the breeding is poor. People are genetically attuned to pork, which is why we use pigs’ valves in human heart transplants. But you will often find parasites – a kind of tapeworm – in it, especially in poor-quality meat. If those parasites get into the system, they say “whoopee!”, go wild – and can go on to cause internal cysts.

Frankly, though, I’d give any meat a go. As well as horse, I ate badger when I was younger, which has a similar taste to young wild boar. During my teenage years, West Country pubs had badger hams on the bar rather like jamón ibérico today. I’ve never to my knowledge eaten dog – although I know plenty of people of Asian origin who have – and I think that’s where I’d draw the line. I would be sentimental about dog meat. Although I do hear it has an interesting flavour.

'Clarissa’s England: A Gamely Gallop through the English Counties’ by Clarissa Dickson Wright (Hodder & Stoughton) is available from Telegraph Books at £20 + £1.35 p&p. Call 0844 871 1516 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk